Idera, a provider of management and administration software tools for the Microsoft SQL Server database, has introduced SQLsafe 5.0, the latest version of its high performance backup and recovery solution for Microsoft SQL Server databases. SQLsafe 5.0 makes it easy to setup and monitor an entire log shipping environment, with the added advantage of compressing database log backup files, saving a tremendous amount of network bandwidth and disk space.
Rick Pleczko, president and CEO of Idera, tells 5 Minute Briefing that "log shipping is a more cost-effective method of ensuring critical system high availability than database mirroring. With log shipping, a transaction log file from a production database is pushed to a standby database server at frequent intervals, and this secondary database is updated with those most recent transaction logs. This method enables an up-to-date standby database to always be ready for application failover without the need to purchase expensive database mirroring software."
As with previous versions, the vendor states that SQLsafe 5.0 continues to provide a high-performance backup and recovery solution that reduces database backup times by up to 50% over native backups, and saves disk space by compressing data up to 95%. SQLsafe 5.0 also offers hands-free automated backup of multiple SQL Servers, centralized monitoring and management of all backup jobs enterprise-wide, and five levels of encryption to help database administrators ensure compliance with corporate data security and backup policies.
New features in SQLsafe 5.0 include Log Shipping Policies to quickly configure and implement a log shipping environment to create and synchronize a standby server, Log Shipping Monitoring for real-time monitoring of log shipping operations and notification of any synchronization issues or delays, and AES 256-bit encryption that is compatible with the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS). For more information about SQLsafe 5.0 and Idera, go here.